


i've never felt more alone

by alistaxr



Series: what am i going to do with all this want in my body? [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Inspired by Richard Siken, Non-Linear Narrative, Ozai (Avatar) is an Asshole, POV Second Person, Spirits, Zuko (Avatar)-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-12
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:13:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,712
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28026834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alistaxr/pseuds/alistaxr
Summary: isn't it terrifying, getting old.or. the entire world holds its breath
Relationships: Aang & Zuko (Avatar), Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Ozai/Ursa (Avatar), Ursa & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: what am i going to do with all this want in my body? [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2052903
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	i've never felt more alone

**Author's Note:**

> we on a new account bitches. same as always props to [remy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crownedscribe/pseuds/crownedscribe)

**i.** \- _'here is the repeated image of the lover destroyed.'_

Your birth is filled with complications. Your mother is near constantly ill throughout it all, so sick her firebending practically disappears. 

(this is a sign. it does not mean what they think it means.)

You are born as the sun sets, unnaturally still and cold, like you have been encased in ice. You do not cry, and it is only the spark in your eyes that saves you from your father's wrath. the look in your mother’s eye is filled with relief and terror.

(this is also a sign. years later your mother disappears from the palace like she was never there, and none of the servants are surprised.)

(years later, your father tells you that your sister was born lucky, and you were lucky to be born, and none of the servants are surprised.)

**ii.** \- _'this is not harmless, you are not breathing.'_

Your mother is concerned about you, you are certain. She has seen you when you can feel too much of everything, and the only thing you can do is lie there and breathe. 

She has not said anything though, not yet. you don't think she ever will.

(there is a quiet wariness in all the residents of the palace. azulon is a kind emperor to his subjects, ozai is not a kind prince.)

(sometimes, you hear your father speaking to generals about the war’s progress, and you don’t like what they have to say at all. maybe that is the beginning of your downfall, you’ll never know for sure.) 

She will not say anything, and you will not either, and still the dreams come. 

You dream in sensations, usually. Sometimes it is the gentle lapping of water against your body, gentle and loving. you cannot see but you can feel the bright light of the moon in the sky. 

Sometimes, though, you dream of dancing laughter and dark water. Moving fabric. The Spirit laughs at you and calls you name-stealer.

There are also dreams of fire, but not ones that hurt and destroy. This fire is warm but not burning, comforting, in an odd way. You can hear a woman's laughter - mother? - and feel the heat of the sun on your back.

You sometimes feel soil and earth under your feet. Just ahead the earth is moving, shifting, and there is a solid, earthen hand on your shoulder. You lean back, and the arm moves to support you. This is important, and you don't know why.

These dreams don’t cause you any fear, although you know they should. You know you should tell your mother that maybe there’s something wrong, but you never do.

(in the quiet of your mind, you recognize that this is not normal. not for any fire nation royal, at least.) 

(you learned the language of silence before anything else.)

**iii.** \- _'tell me how all this, and love too, will ruin us.'_

There is one dream that frightens you, though. It is fairly innocuous except that it isn’t. You wouldn’t be scared if it was. 

You are in the air and maybe you are falling, but someone is laughing, holding onto you. 

You can hear snatches of voices, a choir of them, and you lean back against the body holding you, and you feel happy.

This is not what scares you. 

What scares you is that when you wake up, the air flows around you like it is alive. 

(what scares you is how you wish for the sensation of weightlessness again, then sensation of freedom and the feeling of peace. you wish for it constantly.)

It doesn’t take you long to realize there is a spirit in the palace, you can barely understand how anyone else doesn’t notice. 

(you wonder if it is because your family has not spoken to the fire sages in years, and then you remember you’re not supposed to know about that, and you stop wondering.)

You start hearing them in the waking world, bell like laughter and gentle cajoling. They are quieter than most other things, soft and sweet when nothing else is.

They follow in your footsteps, and maybe the curtains of the palace are moving in a breeze that doesn’t exist. The air around you is impossibly lighter and you know that your servants know there's something different about you, but you cannot bring yourself to care.

(you do care when your father looks at you differently, you make yourself scarce for days on end, only venturing out for lessons and water, and maybe a meal every few days. it's not healthy and you know it, but you are more afraid of your father's anger than you are of starvation. the spirit does not appreciate this behavior, and they make their displeasure known. the air is heavier, almost oppressive, and you can maybe hear an angry sob. but then they curl close, and hold you. you are pathetically grateful.) 

**iv.** \- _'the gentleness that comes, not from the absence of violence -'_

You and Azula have an understanding, of sorts. She doesn’t push you off of buildings anymore, and you help her sneak around the palace to get out of her lessons. 

There is one time, though, that your father realizes she has disappeared, and you both curl close together in the rafters and hide. You both are deadly silent, and you do not know what she has noticed, but she looks at you differently after that. 

You soon realize that you do not like change much at all.

**v.** \- _'and you're trying to smile. and they're trying to smile.'_

The siege on Ba Sing Se has ended, and everything has changed. 

Your uncle has returned from war. Lu Ten is dead. Grandfather is dead. Mother is gone. You are the crown prince. Heir apparent to the Firelord. 

(father was going to kill you. father was going to kill you.)

You don’t know what to do.

(mother is gone.)

The spirit is nearby more than not now, somber, which is unusual, but everything is unusual now. 

(mother is gone.) 

You are falling behind in your firebending training. Father is disappointed. 

(motherisgonemotherisgone _motherisgone_.)

Father is always disappointed. He expects so much more than you are able to give, so most days you avoid him. You avoid Azula as well, her words are made of razors and you do not like being cut.

You mostly stay with your Uncle, who is grieving. You remember Lu Ten from before you were haunted by spirits. He was a strong bender and an amazing swordsman. He didn’t always have the most time for you, but whenever he did, he tried to teach you what he knew.

He taught you the breathing exercises required for firebending and he taught you what muscles you need to train to be a strong swordsman. He taught you how to throw a punch and how to take one.

(your father did not much like that last part, he says that ‘ _physical fighting is for non-bending weaklings_ ’ and you agree with him because you are supposed to.)

He taught you how to care, you realize, and you miss him.

You help your Uncle build his shrine, and sometimes, you go down there and tell him about the going-ons of the Fire Nation so that he can rest easy. You tell him about your training and about how much you plan on doing to help the citizens when you are Emperor. You tell him your doubts and your worries and you tell him about the spirit in your shadow.

_Lu Ten, this war, can it be right? All of my life I have been told that we are spreading Fire Nation innovation to the world and how grateful the people are, but I have heard some things, and they make me doubt. One of the older generals was talking freely about burning villages to the ground for refusing to surrender and how best to transport earthbenders to coal mines for cheap labor. Yet, everyone assures me all is well, and that I will know all I need to in good time. I can’t tell who is lying anymore. I only want the best for my people. Tell me, Lu Ten, do you have an answer? No one else does._

(when you are older, you are selfishly grateful that lu ten left for war and then died, because then, you didn’t have to disappoint him like you did everybody else. He didn’t have to see you fail azula, or your father, or your country.

he didn’t have to see you fail your mother, or your uncle, or the air nomad in your shadow.

maybe, most importantly, he didn’t watch you fail yourself, time and time again.)

**vi.** \- _'oh, the things we invent when we are scared and want to be rescued.'_

You make a mistake by asking the spirit their name. 

For a split second, you can feel their confusion, like they don’t know what you are asking. 

And then you feel the spirit tell you. 

You can feel your entire world break and time slow down and run together. For that second - it felt like a thousand years - the spirit speaks directly to you. And it hurts.

You can feel one hundred years of pain and isolation and your room is freezing like you are submerged under ice.

( **air nomad.** ) 

On some level, you always understood that you were being haunted by a spirit. But this spirit is old, an air nomad that was probably killed in the siege of the Air Temples. 

(your father calls it a glorious battle, but your culture teacher says the air nomads did not have an army. you hate that you cannot clearly call anyone a liar anymore.)

It takes you an embarrassingly long time to realize you are lying flat on your back on the floor, but sitting up would require moving too much, and you are tired. 

(in the moment between asleep and awake, you hear the spirit call you agni’s chosen, and something inside you ignites.

You trust them, and they trust you. This is important, no matter what else happens.) 

**vii.** \- _'sometimes you get so close to someone you end up on the other side of them.'_

Your uncle has a different gait now, a different presence. He seems lighter, more jovial, and there seems to be more cheer in the palace than there ever was. 

This is a kindness, you know. 

Your uncle has been to the spirit world, though, and that makes you wary. Not afraid, because you could never fear your uncle - he was kind and old and had grown soft in the years after Ba Sing Se - but wary. 

Your father has taught you to expect the worst, and the worst your uncle can do is realize that you have been harboring an airbender in the Palace for years - no matter if the airbender is alive or dead.

(this is not the worst that could have happened.)

**viii.** \- _‘how much can you change and get away with it, before you turn into someone else, before it's some kind of murder?’_

You spoke out of turn. 

(you can't sacrifice an entire division like that! those soldiers love and defend our nation! how can you betray them?)

You are burned. 

(you will learn respect, and suffering will be your teacher.)

You are Prince Zuko no longer.

(later, you’ll wonder if he burned all the kindness out of you, and maybe you’ll be right.)

* * *

**i.** \- _'someone once told me that explaining is an admission of failure.'_

Ozai - he’s not your father anymore because you are banished - speaks to you, which you don’t really understand. 

He says that he wanted to talk to you before anyone else tries to warp his decision. He said that he wouldn’t do something like that unless he needed to, and he needed to. He says that his decision is just, and that he cannot wait until you return to your former glory. 

The wind calls him a liar. 

You don’t. You can’t.

**ii.** \- _' - but despite the abundance of it.'_

There is another moment, in that sickbed, that you are sure you imagined. You think Azula is in your blind spot, and you are tense. She is silent, no scathing comments to be heard. Her nimble fingers catch on the bandaging around your eye, and you whimper, fear clouding your senses, but she doesn’t stop. She unwraps the cotton, and stares at the ugly, cracking burn that mars half your face. You hear her breath in, like maybe she’s going to talk, but she doesn’t. She runs.

You have never seen Azula run from anything.

**iii.** \- _'you swallow my heart and flee, but I want it back now, baby. i want it back.'_

You read your banishment decree until you could read it in your sleep. 

You are banished. You must find the avatar and bring him back in chains to your father before your banishment is lifted. You have a week to come up with a crew and pack your things. Once your ship leaves Fire Nation waters, you cannot come back without the Avatar. Otherwise you will be arrested, tried, and publicly executed for treason. 

The spirit in your shadow is furious. Until they are suddenly not. 

Their sorrow is oppressive. 

They drag you over to your mother’s picture, and rest your hand on it. They wipe at the tears spilling out of your eyes, and you can actually feel their hand drag across your face. 

_Never forget who you are._

They disappear. You have never felt more alone.

**iv.** \- _'it's too ugly to be human. it's too ugly to be you.'_

You find that anger is easier than sorrow.

**v.** \- _'this is the map of my heart, the landscape after cruelty._ '

Iroh refuses to leave when you tell him to. 

He gets you a ship, and he pulls together a ragtag crew from whoever he could find - some from his old regiments, some who were on shore leave and willing to be transferred - and he won’t leave. 

You want him gone. 

(you want the whole world gone. that’s a lie, you want your mother here, and you want the air nomad spirit here, and you want your uncle here, but you are angry. so angry.)

‘I can do it’ you tell your uncle, and he doesn’t look like he believes you, but you don’t care, because you can go home someday. 

(you remember the nurses that called this a fool’s errand and the servants that said that you’re the only one who can’t see it, and you manage to pull the fraying parts of your psyche together through pure force of will. you refuse to fall apart now, there is a job to be done.)

(you are a good prince, and a loyal son, so you will bring the avatar back to the fire nation in chains. you have to. you have to.)

**vi.** \- _'i am singing now while rome burns.'_

Being on that ship is difficult, and not just in the normal seafaring way. Although, yes, it takes you awhile to balance properly, especially with how bad the sight in your left eye has become - you can see, barely, and it is mostly shapes and shadows - but this is not the most difficult part.

No, the most difficult part is simply how demoralizing it is to be there. The first decision you make is to head North, towards the Western Air Temple. The Temple lies in Fire Nation waters, and this will be your only chance to investigate.

Once you leave, you cannot return.

You knew that the Fire Nation had massacred the people that lived there, the people the avatar had known, but no amount of knowledge prepared you for the site that greeted you.

There were skeletons everywhere, some even still with the rags of clothing they had on when they died.

The scorch marks remained. The air got heavier the further inside you went, but this was what your ancestors had done in the name of the war you would inherit.

You needed to see it all.

Much of the temple’s library had been destroyed, either burned or pillaged. But there were some things leftover. They were vastly inconsequential, except for one. It looked like it was meant to teach the script of the Air Nomads, and if you were going to find where the Avatar was hiding -  _ an airbending spirit had hid in the Fire Nation capital for years and no one noticed, how did they expect you to find the  _ **_Avatar_ ** _ anywhere else _ \- you needed to know all you could.

Despite your best hopes, the temple is uninhabited. But, something there still breathes, you feel it on the wind. 

You think it  _ is _ the wind.

(the spirit sighs at you, although you don’t notice. the spirit sighs and she thinks that could have been one of my sons. she sighs and she thinks that there will be others, who are not merciful like her. there are others who will feed on that pain, who will turn it to anger and he will not notice.

she cannot help you, though, she is not strong enough to face what lies in the future, but maybe she can give you somewhere safe to be. she thinks of a city in a crater, and a younger sibling that's starting to doubt, and she disappears.

she disappears, and you do not notice.)

**vii.** \- _'the narrator blames the birds. and you want to blame the birds as well.'_  


There is something more to this place than you understand, and you know you should try to figure out what it is, but you have seen enough to know the atrocities your forefathers have committed. 

The Western Air Temple has its secrets, and you do not want to learn them.

**viii.** \- _'take the parts of yourself that make you uncomfortable and pretend they're across the room.'_

The first time you see the scar on your face, you punch your mirror. It shatters, and the glass cuts your hand, and you feel none of it. 

You feel nothing at all, and you can’t breathe. You can’t breathe. You can’t breathe.

Your nails catch on skin and you can’t breathe. 

You look like a monster. You can’t feel anything. 

You feel the rough skin of your scar and you manage to swallow your panic. Fine. 

This is fine. You look like a monster because you are one.

(something breathes. something latches onto you. these are not the same thing.)

**ix.** \- _'there's nowhere to go, i thought. there's nowhere to go.'_

The ocean is loud. It is a vast well of voices and you have to hear every one.

(when your mother wasn’t gone, she would tell you that if you looked into the ocean for long enough, it would show you your loved ones, floating alongside you. 

you did not like the idea of that when she told you, and you still do not like it now.)

**x.** - _'here we are in the bowels of the thing: your world doesn't make sense.'_

You hunt the Avatar for a long time. You doubt the war for a long time. 

Everything is conflicting in your mind and some days you cannot move for how heavy your thoughts are. 

Your uncle sits with you, his hand over your forehead, and some part of you rebels at being so vulnerable. 

(you look like a monster because you are one. uncle stays. one of these statements is a lie.)

You are much too angry to be gentle with, but your Uncle is never harsh with you, no matter how much you goad him. 

(he never raises a hand towards you, he never burns you. your father did. you don’t know how you feel about that.)

**xi.** \- _'i am more than one thing, and not all of those things are good.'_

You buy the blue spirit mask, and you buy dao blades, and you hide them like it’s something shameful. 

(you buy the blue spirit mask and dao blades and you keep them in the same place you keep your mother’s portrait. 

you re-teach yourself sword fighting, and you tell yourself that even though physical weapons are inferior, that doesn’t mean they don’t work.

you’ve gotten very good at compartmentalizing all your conflicting feelings these days.)

**xii.** \- _'the way you slam your body into mine reminds me i'm alive, but monsters are always hungry, darling.'_

Captain Zhao is three times your age, three times your experience, and three times your anger, but you can control your interactions most times. 

He’ll look down at you and say ‘You’ll never find the Avatar.’ You’ll look him right in the eyes and say ‘Watch me.’ 

It makes him angrier, your faux disinterest. And maybe he terrifies you but then, at least, you’re feeling anything at all. 

(your uncle does not like the way zhao looks at you, like prey to be devoured. you don’t really care. 

that’s worrisome, you think.)

**xiii.** \- _'we are all going forward. none of us are going back.'_

You get older. You grow into your scars. Your fire burns hotter than ever and you are always angry. 

(back home, there is a princess who, in the quiet of her mind, worries. she worries and plans and has realization after realization. 

back home, there is a princess who, in the quiet of her mind, knows that there is something incredibly wrong with her family.)

You get older. You grow into your doubts. You have never questioned your father more than you have now.

(in the south, there are a pair of siblings. where one goes, the other follows. they would traverse hell and high water for each other, because they know nothing else.)

You get older. The only thing you don’t grow into is yourself. Yourself is the only thing you never had enough time to be. 

(in an iceberg, a child awakens for the first time in a century. they wake to a world imbalanced, and a strict deadline to fix it.

a child wakes determined.)

You get older, you get older. You still get older. 

(this is a story about war and children. it isn’t fair, nothing about this is.)


End file.
